The present invention relates to a device for conveying and aligning bottle-shaped blow-molded containers and, more particularly, to a container aligning device for enabling to handle a number of said containers in closely aligned state thereby to perform automation of accommodation of the containers into a packaging box.
There is widely used a screw conveying apparatus which revolves a helical blade mounted around its shaft in predetermined direction as a screw conveyor to feed forward material filled in the space formed between the helical blade and backup plate standing along the helical blade.
In order to convey bottle-shaped containers via such a screw conveyor while maintaining in vertical attitude, it is sufficient that the space formed between the helical blade and the backup plate is slightly larger in size than the diameter of the bottle-shaped containers, however each of the bottle-shaped containers must be dropped in vertical attitude from directly above the space therebetween so as to dispose each of the bottle-shaped containers within the space. Since the helical blade of the screw conveyor is, however, always revolving in predetermined direction, difficulty occurs when the bottle-shaped container is dropped so that the bottle-shaped container collides with the helical blade and is thus easily turned over.
In the meantime, there are also broadly used a variety of devices for aligning numerous products such as containers sequentially conveyed via a conveyor in predetermined array by means of the conveying operation of the conveyor, and automatically conveying and accommodating the containers within a corrugated fiberboard box while maintaining the aligned attitude.
The conventional device operates to dispose a desired number of aligning subdivision plates at an interval corresponding to the thickness of the products in parallel along the conveying direction of the conveyor on the conveyor, to introduce the products into the spaces formed between the aligning subdivision plates in accordance with the conveying operation of the conveyor thereby to naturally align the products in the number of longitudinal lines defined by the aligning subdivision plates on the conveyor, and to convey and accommodate the products thus aligned into a corrugated fiberboard box while remaining the aligned array of the products. If the products are thus conveyed, the spaces formed between the respective products such as bottle-shaped containers become relatively large with the result that it is difficult to accommodate a sufficient number of the bottle-shaped containers as compared with the internal volume of the corrugated fiberboard box.
Accordingly, it is considered to accommodate the products into a corrugated fiberboard box by arranging the products in zigzag state in parallel from the longitudinally aligned products. It certainly increases the number of the products to be accommodated within the same corrugated fiberboard box. It is, however, very difficult to automate the accommodation of the products into the corrugated fiber-board box, and it is not yet performed practically.